I never imagined I'd be writing a post here that included my own shortlist, that's how allergic I've become to longlists and shortlists and prizes that are not awarded, etc. But, here we are.

What I've only come to appreciate (or freak out about) after announcing this fine project of mine is how many amazing novels set in Los Angeles feature parts of L.A. that no longer exist and how much fiction that is "quintessentially LA" for many people is crime fiction. A few contributors bemoaned the "crime" fiction situation in Los Angeles so much that I feel certain they went out of their way to suggest other books.

After many of you submitted your favorite #LANovel for the project I announced last week, here are the top 20 picks with the most votes (in random order):

Our Ecstatic Days by Steve Erickson

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

Ask the Dust by John Fante

The Barbarian Nurseries by Hector Tobar

What Makes Sammy Run by Budd Schulberg

Play it As it Lays by Joan Didion

Black Dahlia by James Ellroy

The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh

Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

Shopgirl by Steve Martin

Jamesland by Michelle Huneven

The Long Goodbye Raymond Chandler

L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy

My Hollywood by Mona Simpson

Zeroville by Steve Erickson

The Flutter of an Eyelid by Myron Brinig

This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Homes

The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle

Quite a list, no? Now that you've seen it, what do you feel is missing? Are you among those who suggested a novel that didn't make the Top 20? Will you still follow along anyway? Or are you now over this entire thing before it has properly begun?

It should also be noted that many of you suggested I add all of Michael Connelly's books and all of Robert Crais. If there's clarity and consensus among you as to which ones are truly top of the pops and deserve to be on this esteemed-company list, let me know.

The real task looms: How to select a novel that has places I can actually visit vs. simply sharing photo archives of a razed Bunker Hill with you all? As a proper bookish LA nerd, this is a task I'm relishing. Next week, I'll announce my first pick and I'll get to reading.

I've been thinking and writing about social reading for a long time now and have been advocating for an element of social that is local, even hyper local. My post about social voting vs. social reading was a first grasping effort to quantify what social reading was to me. My first app attempt centered around check-ins. Instead of checking in on Foursquare and knowing what dish the other checked-in folks in the coffee shop recommend, I wanted to build something that would tell me what everyone in the coffee shop was currently reading. Imagine the conversations that could take place offline, in our own community, around books! Nearly two years later, my perspective has shifted.

While I'd still very much like to create this app (and many new apps have sprung up since my wild vision years ago that could almost get at it with a bit of kluge-y usage), I've since realized it would only offer the initial touch point for conversation. It would connect you with others that either loved or loathed the book you were reading, but it couldn't connect you more deeply with the story itself. I believe this - the desire to connect more deeply with the story - is the underlying premise of nearly all social reading endeavors, whether they are ultimately successful or not. And many are unsuccessful because their focus is on the reading of a story, instead of the story itself.

Since I started banging on about social reading long ago, there have been so manydefinitions and spiriteddiscussions about what "social reading" means, what it is, what it isn't, what tools reflect this, how readers really read, how they really want to interact with authors (if ever) and will they ever use these social tools that have risen up to fill the "social reading" void. Some excellent tools have been developed that allow readers to share and discuss text in a multitude of new ways. Are these tools the final definition of social reading? For some, probably. For me, they are one way "in" to a book but are certainly not the only way. I continue to be primarily interested in "social reading" as something that's not just about technology, but how tech tools can help us shed our online-only lives and connect offline with a novel, a character, a setting, a community or other readers who share a love of the same. This view is part of a larger philosophy I have about stepping away from computers and taking part in the world that lives just beyond your front door...something I fully accept not everyone subscribes to with as much fervor as I do.

I'm not alone in this line of thinking. Small Demons is centered around all the elements within a novel - including place - that you connect to as a reader. Their site allows you to delve deeper into the "storyverse" of a novel you loved (or loathed.) This gets at something much deeper than sharing a quote on Twitter or Tumbling your favorite passages while you're mid-read or hosting a roundtable discussion of a specific novel on your blog or even attending your local book club. This is story as social, not reading as social.

This idea of story as social is what I'm most interested in exploring further. It is what led me to the #LANovels Project. Through social channels (natch) I've gathered up a list of your favorite LA novels. Most of which I've never read (terrible LA resident that I am) but have meant to read for a long time. Here's my plan: pick a novel, read the novel, explore the local landscape of the novel and document that exploration using a variety of tools that may (or may not, this is purely an experiment) help illuminate the story for you. Don't live in LA but loved Fante's Ask the Dust? What if I read it and left audio-notes on Broadcastr at each location in the novel? Never been to Echo Park but it features heavily in your favorite LA novel? How can tech allow me to connect you with the area in a way you can't without being there? How can tech allow you to connect me with a novel setting in Baltimore that I've never seen?

Surely you can argue that any novelist worth their salt would do a landscape or city or setting justice...no additional after-the-fact tech/social enhancements required. I don't disagree. But I'm interested in exploring this notion of place as character which also happens to be the place in which I live. It's already happening around me with every film filmed on my street. With every car commercial filmed outside my window. (It would shock you to learn how many national car commercials are filmed in the same one-block stretch of downtown LA, my 4th-Street-Bridge-view somehow deemed a perfect stand-in for "any city USA.") What you see when you watch a new car commercial is not what I saw when it was filmed. My additional perspective adds to the story in some way. I know what this bridge looks like when no one is filming. I remember the car crash there last year. The choir that sang on it last month. The way it looks just like Paris at night if you have a drink or two and squint just so. Might the same be true for novels? If so, THAT's the social component I'm most interested in. Story. Stories set in your local community...a community of other interested readers and those who cannot physically be here.

This is all a wild experiment that could reveal much or reveal little. I'll be announcing the initial list of novels and the first pick next week. I hope you'll come along for the ride.

I've finished Graham Swift's latest novel, Wish You Were Here, and it was all that I've missed in the years that I've not read any of his work. Big aches, long-held sadness, hoped-for-solutions that never come. He is a writer who understands the nature of the human soul and reveals our own nature to us patiently, without fanfare, so that his ability to know each of us is not an ah-ha moment mid-novel but a slowly building sense -- and relief -- that our deepest sadnesses and greatest unspoken fears are fully known.

I didn't find myself marking every other sentence for its brilliance or even noting story structure while reading (something I often over-analyze mid-read which makes for a mess of expectations and let downsthat are entirely of my own making). I was simply in the story. In the pain of it. In the character's own lack of awareness and then awareness. In each family member's fumbling attempt to control their own destiny, to claim it in some way, to mark it as something not-inevitable.

It's been a week or so and it has hung around me like a cloak. Swift has a way of illuminating profound loss so exquisitely that it seeps into me and takes hold of me. I've had a hard time shaking it off.

"He has what might be described as an old-­fashioned humanist sensibility; the unearthing of buried emotion, and the consequences of that unearthing, is his métier. Jamesian in sensibility and to some degree in style, he finds tragedy in the most ordinary conversation, redemption in the way one character offers another an umbrella. You forget how piercing this sort of thing can be until you see Swift doing it so well, and with such patience. The depth of field in a Swift novel, thematically and emotionally, is vast. At his best, he suggests that looking intently at the smallest, most mundane thing can yield a glimpse into the meaning of life."

This is a beautiful book. One of Swift's best. Would love to know if you've read it and what you thought.

i got a tattoo (my first. only?) last weekand though i did not expect itthe experience changed me

all the fear of needlesall the fear of blood throughout my lifethe fainting at doctor's offices, passing out during violent movies(i still have not seen the needle to the heart scene in Pulp Fiction without hands covering my eyes)all the fear of judgementthe concern about what others think of me (the tattoo placed in just the spot where i may be possibly-judged daily so I can learn to let it go)i embraced that fear and i owned it, if only for a day the day of the first tattoo

and what the poem, its title now inked, means to meits title and its rally cry now permanently part of mewhat it means to me in terms of livingin terms of making this life mean somethingin terms of standing up for myself for those who are not given the same freedoms i enjoyin terms of shedding all the judgement from my mother all the fear she instilled in mein terms of celebrating all those i've lost in my life the examples they set for me of a better way to live, unencumbered by fear

where it happened also matteredthough i had planned to get the tattoo weeks later in another city entirely

oh the power of placethe power of place as character in my lifegetting the tattoo at that shop, in that place, and all the memories tied up for me in san diegothe shedding of what i once was, finally, becoming someone i truly am and not being afraid of someone not liking it, no longer afraid of someone deeming me somehow not enough (or too much)

it felt like the best kind of fuck youit felt like the best kind of here i amit felt like the best kind of "it's okay to be happy after everything you've been through"it felt like the years of not rocking the boat, of avoiding confrontation, of holding together a family of alcoholics had come to an endit felt like homeand joe, the artist who would mark meand his galway accent and all we discussed within moments of meeting each otherall the connections to Ireland, to the bar I met my husband in, to the long lost Irish belonging I felt moments off the plane in Dublinand the solar eclipse, so auspicious on the day of our meeting, of his suggestion, only hours into knowing me, that i might be someone who'd over-think their tattoo and mind-fake themselves into not getting it (oh, really? you don't say...)appointment for late june cancelledappointment for two days later noted in the booksjoe would mark me on a tuesday

and then

watching that first line of the hfeeling it burn my skinwatching the curve of the s, the arc of the athen all that excitement and all that fear and all that adrenaline crashing downupon me, around me, inside mesweatingcolddizzy a biti had to look awayi had planned to go in there and be a champfor himfor mefor everyone in the roomthat's how i saw it going down in my mindbut i falteredi was not a champ, but i had wanted to beand i was there, in that chairand it was happeningand i had made it happenthere was an inevitability to it that was beautifuland wasn't that something?

the way he distracted me during the tense momentsreminding me to breatheasked me about a conversation my brother and i had two days before during my brother's tattoojoe was the old lady you don't think is listening, but he is oh he ishe remembered about the wine. i was touched.had i finally told my brother which bottle it was i forgot to bring?i had.and what did my brother think of that, joe asked.i looked at my brother.he said it was an amazing bottle i'd left behind. he was sad we could not drink it. (the 2001 Chateau d'Yquem awaits)i know, i said. but at least it exists in this world.and joe repeated it with a laugh and a smile.at least it exists in this world.

and we were all there in the moment of my undoing and remakingwe were there to witness it together and each of them in the room had a sense of how big it was for methey had an ideabut they could not possibly have known how bigi didn't even know until the drilling stoppeduntil i felt that swipe of the glove and the vaseline applied (that i had seen so many times on my friend's tattoos or on any reality tattoo show, you pick) and i realized the tattoo - and the experience of getting my first - was over.

and i was exhilarated and proud of myself.and sad.i had not wanted this moment of personal triumph to be over so soon.i wanted to luxuriate in it. extend it.i asked questions. too many.about tattoo care.about the next time.didn't want it to end.didn't want to break the spell.he said he was honored to be the first to mark me.i, as an open wound (literally), took that in and owned it. instead of the usual inner voice that would say "ah, he says that to everyone", i just took it. believed it.was honored right back.

and then

out on the street, the sun shining, we're in search of a guinnessin search of a way to celebrateto seal the deal that was already permanently ink-sealedto celebrate that i had done itto celebrate that my brother could not believe itto celebrate all that had come before in san diegoto celebrate and honor all that i was leaving behind, shedding, saying goodbye toso as to make room for all that lies ahead

and we drankand we toastedto tattoosto firststo san diegoto fucked up familiesto artto braveryto all that lies ahead

it's been a week since i got my tattooi don't want this spell to endthis experience - this minor tattoo - holds more in it for me than any gift of any monetary value i could give myselfthe gift? permissionto be me, unapologeticallyto be imperfectto be vulnerableto accept i deserve happiness on my own termsto know those terms will change and to be fine with it

i'm emboldened now in ways i never had been beforedon't like me? finedon't like this permanent mark on my wrist? also finegetting to "fine"getting to "take me as i am and all i'm trying to become"may sound simple to you, though it is everything to mei have finally become, in part, the person i'd hoped i would be

this mark on my body may seem like a cliche to youor misguided or something to future-regret to me, it ushers in an entirely new era of possibilitiesif i can do this thing i never thought i'd be brave enough to dowhat else will i accomplish with my newly found nerve?

I've waxed poetic about Book Alley before. But they moved. And my life got crazy busy. And I haven't been there in a very long time. On Sunday, though, I woke with Daisy Mint on the brain (so scrumptious) and Book Alley is mere steps away. For a thai-loving book geek, I can't think of a better two-fer in Los Angeles. Daisy Mint for lunch. Book Alley for post-thai browsing.

I spent Sunday afternoon doing exactly this and I came away with some unexpected finds:

A first edition of Lydia Millet's Omnivores, complete with a loose author photo (from Algonquin Books) tucked just inside the front cover. I've been looking for a hardcover version of this for some time, so I was delighted to find this gem tucked away in the M section.

The beautifully appointed The Art of East Asia, a two-volume set from Koenemann. Not only are the contents fascinating and creatively invigorating, the way the book has been put together is stunning. The interior covers have a subtly printed paper that I caressed for at least ten minutes. The attention to detail in presenting the book as book -- as a beautiful thing to hold in one's hands and really relish -- reminded me a bit of Craig Mod's recent "Hack the Cover" piece about book design in a digital book world. This collection is worthy of its own post, so expect that forthcoming.

Four books in the larger (how large?) collection of Masterworks of Ukiyo-e. These are also worthy of their own post.

All the art books will only be with me temporarily as they are gifts for a friend who does amazing traditional Japanese tattoo work and who will, I hope, draw much inspiration from all that is contained within their pages.

And yet. The books are in my care for a few more weeks and I plan to fully soak up all their hard-to-find goodness (I've also set alerts at every out-of-print specialist to wrangle copies of my own). I promise to do them justice by sharing their yumminess with all of you. Stay tuned.

I had no idea, when I waxed poetic about Graham Swift recently, that he had a new novel out. Though the title leaves much to be desired (really? there wasn't ANY other title that felt more original?), I am now deciding if I should re-read all that came before or just dive in as I would a chocolate bar after a chocolate fast (which I've never done, mind you, I'm not that crazy)?

Also: I finished Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station last night. Holy hell. I love, love, loved it. So beautiful. So spare and yet expansive. So full of all the things we think but never say. So full of all the contradiction we hold within and yet try so hard to pretend we have polished. Still thinking over this one. I don't want to start anything else until I've savored this one a bit longer. Have you read it? Do tell.

I've been reading Steve Erickson's These Dreams of You in fits and starts. It's been a crazy week of work, so this novel has become a strange respite (mostly because it is in no way a respite) from work madness. The novel has its own internal madness going on, so it has made for an odd reading week.

Two bits have stayed with me, though, and I keep thinking back on them when I'm on six back to back conference calls day after day (and if you can be on my mind during all of that, that's something, no?):

"This is prosperity, he bays at them beneath montana nights, calculated as much by what's polluted, what's killed, what's secured and incarcerated, but never by a child's delight, a poem's spell, the immutable power of a kept promise. It's a prosperity that measures everything that means nothing and nothing that means everything. It tells all of us, he concludes to the crowds, everything about our country except why it's ours."

"I don't know how much time I have," he says, "to become the person that I hope I am."

Neither of these passages give you any idea - in a tangible way - what this novel is about. And yet, they do. I'm not yet at the point where I'm clear how I even feel about the book. I was very much into it early on, lost some steam during the Kennedy stuff, now I'm in a haze that might be more related to too much work than a failing of the novel.

I'll circle back on this one though, as Erickson is attempting to do something interesting that I admire whether he succeeds fully or not.

I hide my eyes from all reviews about a book until I've read it. Then, particularly if I had a strong reaction to a book, I'll take my time thinking about it for a week or two and then curiosity gets the best of me. What did others think? Am I the only one who liked it/hated it? If we agree, did we agree on the same things? If we disagreed, do I agree with the ways in which we disagree? I have to know.

And so, almost a week to the day that I finished The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits (a book I really dug and thought was a lot of fun and didn't take itself too seriously), I'm peeking around to see what others thought.

The Rumpus found the novel "provocative and full of hefty, even academic ideas--at its best, a nouveau feminist manifesto."

SF Weekly thinks "Like everything in Julavits' fiction, this grows more fascinating — and mysterious — the more you read. That's also true for the fiction itself — here is a novelist whose audacity is matched only by her inventiveness and power. And, shit, she's funny, too."

The Globe and Mail liked it, but of course had to mention that goddamn Believer manifesto from eons ago and then swirl it into a smarmy closing point that was nothing if not forced. Julavits must be equally tired of that same song being played every time she does press. So she wrote a manifesto. Years ago. Let it go.

NYT is less impressed and I agree with their plot critique and where it gets too mired in detail for its own good. To wit: "While the language remains vivid, its satisfactions are overwhelmed by the confusion of the overdetermined plot."

So, there you have it. Seems I'm not entirely crazy for digging this book as much as I do. Always nice to know. I'm often way out there on my own, loving something that everyone thinks is rubbish. Or, most often, really not liking the novel everyone is swooning about. Ah, well. The fun games we play post-read.

Several writers I admire have recently written pieces I enjoyed quite a bit:

Walter Kirn's GQ piece explores the requisite (or not) empathy a presidential candidate must exude in order to win hearts and minds. Money quote: "My theory is that in the Oprah-haunted '90s, when self-help had supplanted public-policy as the preferred path to widespread human betterment, the press needed an apolitical way to talk about politics. They made it about feelings. They made it about identifying, relating. They forgot about Harvard and Yale, the will-to-power, the ruthlessness that is ambition's twin, and finally they forgot about us. They forgot that we want to salute, not share a hug, and that we don't mind a little remoteness if its offset by wisdom, strength, and intellect." Indeed.

Jim Hanas interviews Douglas Rushkoff over at Co.Create and they get into an interesting conversation about the role reversal of artists & technologists. And branding. Since I spend the majority of my days working with clients on branding and being authentic in their digital communications with customers, this struck me as spot-on: "[But] it’s not about creating a mythology around the way a product was created, so it’s no longer 'these were cookies made by elves in a hollow tree.' That’s not the value of the brand. The value of the brand is where did this actually come from? What’s in this cookie? Who made it? Are Malaysian children losing their fingers in the cookie press or is this being made by happy cookie culture people?"

Roger Boylan at Boston Review offers a considered look at The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes in the context of the Barnes back list. Appropriate because I just mooned over Barnes yesterday? Perhaps. But also: "Stylistically, Barnes’s stock-in-trade is quotidian realism, leavened with mild satire and total recall of the feel of the past, frequently of that moment when adolescence becomes adulthood and youthful hope yields to reality." Could this be why I uber-pine for that time when I discovered Barnes? Certainly.

Heidi Julavits has written a new novel, The Vanishers, which kicked so much ass it's crazy:

It was sly and silly and smart and sad all at once - my favorite kind of novel.

It reminded me of the most exhilarating bits of The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas. (They are not so similar, really, but my experience reading both novels was similar. Another world that I could perhaps not relate to, but that I some how could entirely. Giddy all the while.)

I was fully immersed in the other-worldly world she created but loved, loved, loved how she managed to weave in some rather naked truths about our relationships with others and ourselves in a way that felt honest and true and revelatory.

It is very possible I dug this novel so much because it accessed some of my own hidden truths about my relationship with my mother (before and after her death) and the relationship others willed me to have with my mother (mostly after she passed) not to help me in any way but to help themselves grieve.

It could also be that I've hated every novel I've picked up this year that wasn't in some way related to Murakami and so I may simply be glad to have my book loving vibe back again or it may be that Murakami has altered my perspective in such a way that I simply cannot love a novel that is entirely of this world.

And so. There is much more to say here and though I intentionally shy away from "proper book reviews" I may well write a separate post on The Vanishers once I've had time to digest it all.

Then again, I may not, so consider this firm praise and a "buy" recommendation. Please read it. Would love to have a chat with you after you're finished.

I've had the same conversation several times over the past few weeks at various bookish events. It never starts the same way, but it invariably gets to the same spot: a few novelists I discovered in college and in the years just after that I find myself wanting to revisit.

I'm strangely possessive of these writers because they gave me so much to think about and seemed to "get" me and the kinds of things I'd hoped to write at the precise time in my life when I needed to be gotten, so confused was I about my own talents and aspirations and dreams in the literary scene. (Working for a not-so-lovely lit agent did not help matters, but I digress.)

I've never re-read their work because I've somehow relegated their novels and essays to that time in my life, that period of grasping onto ideas and devouring them whole, keeping whatever literary nutrients I could to propel me forward. There was also, of course, my near total obsession with Vintage International books at that time. It didn't hurt that many of these books were issued by Vintage with their delectable and infinitely collectible color-coded spines. (Another digression, worthy of many posts.)

It may be that I'm nostalgic for all that grasping and hoping. Or perhaps I'm just tired of the new new new novel that has become de riguer reading in many literary parts. These writers and the works I read back then are calling to me in a way I can't ignore. Just thinking of Swift's Waterland brightens me up. Spark's Loitering With Intentis a classic I'd like to be steeped in again. Winterson's Art & Lies is begging to be rediscovered. A re-read of Banville's Book of Evidence sounds like home.